Dominion Lecture 2018

"Call Your Mutha’: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene"

Presented by Dr. Jane Caputi

September 24, 2018 6:30 p.m.

Hall of Presidents Room

In this year's lecture Jane Caputi discusses “The Anthropocene,” or “Age of Man,” a proposed scientific name for the current geological age where “humans” now “rival” and “overwhelm” Nature. Glossed over is the truth that said humans are actually those identified by decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter as Man, a Western-identified ethno-class. Meanwhile, others do the dirty work and suffer the consequences of all that “overwhelming.” This illustrated talk, inspired by the richly nuanced, if obscene, MFword, considers the gendered, raced and sexually violent concept of the Anthropocenein dialogue with the ancient one of Mother Earth, newly discernible as the cunctipotent, autonomous and formidable Earth Mutha’.

Jane Caputi is Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University. In 2016, she was named as the Eminent Scholar of the Year by the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. She has written many articles, collaborated with Mary Daly on Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language,and authored three books: The Age of Sex Crime; Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones; and Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture. She has made two educational documentaries, The Pornography of Everyday Lifeand Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth. She also has curated two visual culture exhibits on commercial presidential campaign paraphernalia: Political Circus 2008: Hating Hillary, Baiting Barak, and Pandering with Palin, followed up with From (Castrating) Bitch to (Big) Nuts and Beyond: Political Sideshow 2016. Currently, she writing a new book, Call Your Mutha’:A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocenefor an Oxford University Press series on “Heretical Thinking.”